Staffer's CPR card questioned in death of New Life patient

Nov. 1, 2013

Lindsey Poteet collapsed while en route from New Life to a hospital.

Written by

Walter F. Roche Jr.

The Tennessean

A former employee of the Burns, Tenn., drug treatment facility blamed in the death of a 29-year-old patient has testified that his signature was forged on a key document that has surfaced in a lawsuit filed by the patient’s family.

The company, through its lawyers, called what happened a misunderstanding and said no signature was needed.

In a deposition filed this week in circuit court in Dickson County, the former New Life Lodge employee, Kenny Long, testified that the signature on a CPR competency card for the staffer assigned to bring the patient to a Nashville hospital was not his.

Asked repeatedly by Reid Leitner, the attorney for New Life Lodge, if he was saying that the signature on the card was a forgery, Long said, “Then, yes, it is forgery.”

Long testified he had concluded the New Life employee, Lisa Swafford, had failed a test on her ability to perform CPR and he refused repeated demands that he sign the competency card.

Swafford, records show, was assigned to transport Lindsey Poteet in a New Life vehicle from the Burns drug treatment center to Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville on Aug. 31, 2010. Poteet collapsed en route and was pronounced dead the next day.

In a statement issued in response to a request from The Tennessean, New Life spokeswoman Kristen Hayes attributed the deposition testimony to a misunderstanding of the requirements for issuance of the certification card. She said the rules governing use of the card did not require the trainer to sign it.

She acknowledged that Long did not believe Swafford qualified, but she said another trainer concluded she was qualified and New Life’s director of nursing agreed. The other trainer certified Swafford, Hayes wrote.

“So, Mr. Long was in error when he testified that someone else appeared to have tried to sign his name to the card. It was merely a listing of his name, in keeping with American Heart Association guidelines,” Hayes said in an email, adding that Swafford had been certified on three prior occasions.

“New Life Lodge takes CPR training very seriously and every employee is required to be trained in CPR,” Hayes wrote.

The transcript of the Oct. 4 deposition was filed by the attorney for Poteet’s family, which is suing New Life and its parent, CRC Health, based in Cupertino, Calif. It was filed along with a motion to compel New Life to produce records detailing Poteet’s deteriorating condition in the days and hours before her death.

Staffer called 911

Poteet died Sept. 1, 2010, after being sent in a company vehicle from the Dickson County treatment center to Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville. In a 911 call made by Swafford, who had pulled into a truck stop along the way, she told emergency dispatchers that she did not know how to tell whether Poteet was breathing.

CPR, records show, was not administered until emergency responders arrived at the truck stop.

Asked by Matthew Hardin, the Poteet family’s attorney, if he was surprised that Swafford did not perform CPR, Long said he wasn’t surprised.

“Because I really don’t feel like she was capable of it,” Long said.

During the deposition, Hardin asked Long to give a sample of his signature, which he did, and it became a part of the record in the case.

In the 282-page deposition, Long testified that, based on Swafford’s test performance on a dummy, he did not believe Swafford could perform CPR.

“I said she could not do the compressions,” Long testified. “She couldn’t push the mannequin’s chest down. And, like, she just couldn’t do it. And she was, like, ‘I just can’t do it.’ ”

He said a subsequent effort by Swafford to perform CPR with the mannequin on a table instead of the floor also ended in failure.

The Poteet suit is one of three now pending in the Dickson County court against New Life and CRC, all involving the death of patients.

The Tennessean, in a series of reports, detailed the three deaths and other issues at the facility. Subsequently the state ordered a shutdown. The facility reopened at reduced capacity in April of last year and now serves only adults.